Turning Archival: The Life of the Historical in Queer Studies PDF
Preview Turning Archival: The Life of the Historical in Queer Studies
TURNING ARCHIVAL A book in the series Radical Perspectives: A Radical History Review book series Series editors: Daniel J. Walkowitz, New York University Barbara Weinstein, New York University Duke University Press Durham and London 2022 TURNING ARCHIVAL The Life of the Historical in Queer Studies edited by daniel marshall and zeb tortorici © 2022 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer i ca on acid- free paper ∞ Designed by Courtney Leigh Baker Typeset in Garamond Premier Pro and Din by Westchester Publishing Services Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Marshall, Daniel, [date] editor. | Tortorici, Zeb, [date] editor. Title: Turning archival : the life of the historical in queer studies / [edited by] Daniel Marshall and Zeb Tortorici. Other titles: Radical perspectives. Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2022. | Series: Radical perspectives | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2021059689 (print) | lccn 2021059690 (ebook) isbn 9781478015345 (hardcover) isbn 9781478017974 (paperback) isbn 9781478022589 (ebook) Subjects: lcsh: Gay and lesbian studies—Archival resources. | Gays— History—Sources. | Gays—Research. | Queer theory. | bisac: social science / lgbtq Studies / Gay Studies | history / World Classification: lcc hq75.15 .t837 2022 (print) | lcc hq75.15 (ebook) | ddc 306.76/6—dc23/eng/20220404 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021059689 lc ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021059690 Cover art: Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, H1 (haunting Ebun Sodipo) and H2 (haunting Tobi Adebajo), 2021. Video hologram diptych. Installation dimensions variable. Edition of 4, with 2 AP. Courtesy of the artist. Contents Acknowle dgments · vii Introduction: (RE)TURNING TO THE QUEER ARCHIVES · 1 daniel marshall and zeb tortorici 1. ARCHIVES, BODIES, AND IMAGINATION: THE CASE OF JUANA AGUILAR AND QUEER APPROACHES TO HISTORY, SEXUALITY, AND POLITICS · 33 maría elena martínez 2. DECOLONIAL ARCHIVAL IMAGINARIES: ON LOSING, PERFORMING, AND FINDING JUANA AGUILAR · 63 zeb tortorici 3. TELLING TALES: SEXUALITY, ARCHIVES, SOUTH ASIA · 93 anjali arondekar 4. ORDINARY LESBIANS AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS: THE JUNE L. MAZER LESBIAN ARCHIVES AT UCLA · 111 ann cvetkovich 5. PERFORMING QUEER ARCHIVES: ARGENTINE AND SPANISH POLICING FILES FOR UNINTENDED AUDIENCES (1950S–1970S) · 141 javier fernández- galeano 6. LOOKING A FTER MRS. G: APPROACHES AND METHODS FOR READING TRANSSEXUAL CLINICAL CASE FILES · 165 emmett harsin drager 7. NAMING AFRIKA’S ARCHIVE “QUEER PAN-A FRICANISM” · 185 elliot james 8. SECONDH AND CULTURES, EPHEMERAL EROTICS, AND QUEER REPRODUCTION: NOTES ON COLLECTING DAVID BOWIE RECO RDS · 203 daniel marshall 9. PIRATES AND PUNKS: BOOTLEGS, ARCHIVES, AND PERF OR MANCE IN MEXICO CITY · 233 iván a. ramos 10. UNFIXED: MATERIALIZING DISABILITY AND QUEERNESS IN THREE OBJECTS · 259 kate clark and david serlin 11. AN ARCHIVAL LIFE: UNSETTLING QUEER IMMIGRANT DWELLINGS · 285 martin f. manalansan iv 12. REASSESSING “THE ARCHIVE” IN QUEER THEORY · 303 kate eichhorn 13. CROCKER LAND: A MIRAGE IN THE ARCHIVE · 321 carolyn dinshaw and marget long CODA: WHO W ERE WE TO DO SUCH A THING? GRASSROOTS NECESSITIES, GRASSROOTS DREAMING: THE LHA IN ITS EARLY YEARS · 347 joan nestle Contributors · 359 Index · 365 vi · Contents Acknowle dgments Turning Archival has been a long time in the making, and we are grateful to those who— over the years— made this proj ect pos si ble. The idea for the book came about a fter we, with Kevin P. Murphy, coedited two special issues of Radical History Review (no. 120 from 2014 and no. 122 from 2015) on the topic of “Queer- ing Archives,” and we wish to thank Kevin for his unflagging support for that proj ect and for contributing thoughts and ideas to this book. We also would like to thank Tom Harbison and the editorial board of rhr for their help and support along the way toward publishing those two issues. We thank Duke University Press for permission to republish revised versions of the articles of María Elena Martínez, Martin F. Manalansan IV, and Joan Nestle h ere. Special thanks go to Sarah Gualtieri, who offered the support, consultation, and close readings that enabled us to publish an expanded version of Martínez’s ar- ticle in Turning Archival. We are grateful, too, to Joan Nestle, who provided inspiration, ideas, and encouragement for this proj ect. Special thanks are re- served for both Gisela Fosado and Alejandra Mejía, our editors at Duke Uni- versity Press, who have stuck with us throughout this proj ect, offering criti- cal support, feedback, guidance, and patience along the way. As always, it has been a pleasure— personally and intellectually—to work with them toward the realization of this book. Our contributors too have been patient as we have brought this book into the world, and we thank them for all their work and for the vibrancy of their ideas which have been a powerf ul motor for this proj ect. Anonymous readers of this manuscript, and the Duke University Press Editorial Advisory Board, provided generous and generative feedback and we gratefully acknowledge their input, which has made this a better book. We are thankful as well to several scholars, archivists, and activists who, in one way or another, left their mark on this proj ect: Sara Ahmed, Tamara Chaplin, Jonathan Ned Katz, Oraison Larmon, Deborah Levine, Tavia Nyong’o, Susan Stryker, Marvin J. Taylor, and Jeffrey Weeks, among others. In Melbourne, the Australian Queer Archives and Deakin University’s School of Communication and Creative Arts and its Gender and Sexuality Studies Research Network provided a nour- ishing intellectual environment supporting this work; and Daniel also thanks Valda Marshall, Roger Marshall, Gary Jaynes, Mary Lou Rasmussen, Anna Hickey- Moody, Michal Morris, Don Hill, Dino Hodge, Geoffrey Robinson, Eliza Smith, Peter Aggleton, Rob Cover, Benjamin Hegarty, Timothy Jones, and Duane Duncan. In New York City, the Department of Spanish and Portu- guese Languages and Lit er a tures at New York University has been a supportive intellectual environment to carry out this work. Zeb wishes to acknowledge the help of the archivists at the Archivo General de Centro América, and especially Anna Carla Ericastilla for her unflagging support. Last, we are extremely grate- ful to the nyu Center of the Humanities, and especially to Ulrich Baer and Molly Rogers, for supporting this proj ect with a book subvention grant, and to Jen Burton for assisting with the indexing of the book. The book’s cover artwork is based on art by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley: H1 (haunting Ebun Sodipo) and H2 (haunting Tobi Adebajo), 2021, video holo- gram diptych. These pieces are featured in the artist’s exhibition Get Home Safe at David Kordansky Gallery. Situated throughout Get Home Safe are video portraits composed using motion capture data, which records the movement of objects and people. Here, Brathwaite-Shirley records data from Black trans people and converts the data into text, which, in turn, gives the human form in these works a new, readable body. The portraits speak to visitors of the exhibi- tion and depict Black trans people from a range of source materials, both found by and given to the artist. Also included are images of people Brathwaite-Shir- ley meets; each participant receives compensation for their time and the per- sonal stories they share. The portraits are both homages and testaments to the power of speaking about the fullest range of life experiences. Likewise, they document the process of assuming agency for the ways in which one is remem- bered and identified by the community at large. viii · Acknowl edgments Introduction (Re)Turning to the Queer Archives daniel marshall and zeb tortorici This anthology centers on the queer archival turn at the intersection of fem- inist and queer studies, literary and cultural studies, and history. The book is born from the relationship between ideas of archives and the cultural, po liti- cal, and embodied work of turning.1 We focus on how ideas about the archive have been shaped by rhe torics and practices of specific types of turns, and on the work of turning itself as part of epistemological, historiographical, and archival production. In this light, the book interrogates the cultural politics of turning to the archives— the roles and functions that archives and archi- val knowledges are pressed into to serve a multitude of shifting demands. It also analyzes multiple turns among and away from archives. Our contributors trace overlapping and at times contradictory sequences of turns, where diverse physical objects deposited into (or excluded from) the archives get turned into forms of knowledge, which are then deployed and put to work by a wide range of investigative turns to “the archive” as a site for the imagining and writing of history about sex, gender, and sexuality. Archives are places where material gets turned into something else: evidence or loss, history or an inspiration to do his- tory differently. We are interested, then, in the transformative histories echoing inside the term “to turn,” and in how “the archival” gets turned into a distinct form of archival endeavor when the rec ords being archived focus explic itly on sex, gender, and sexuality. Indeed, insofar as the queer archival turn might be inseparable from p eople’s experiences of being turned on, intellectually or eroti- cally, by what one discovers in the past, it is also inseparable from developments which have seen this emphasis change understandings of what an archive is (or what it can be).
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